


Perception Fuzz

by Merfilly



Series: Of Queens and Kings [4]
Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-27
Updated: 2012-02-27
Packaged: 2017-10-31 20:16:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/347956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Toby is back in the mortal world where his brain tries to turn away the illusions. Alas, Poor Toby.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perception Fuzz

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. I don't think I'd stated before, but I will now: I reject the manga-canon for this and in general. To those that enjoy it, I am glad. I wanted to. But it did not mesh well for me. So this Toby is pretty much an OC built on the baby from the movie.

Toby did not quite understand how he was supposed to find a man who was actually a fae lord in among the teeming masses of humanity. The dwarf Hoggle, who triggered memories of strange parties in Sarah's bedroom before she had left, took Toby right to his own apartment, and then left with a sullen grunt of 'good luck, you'll need it'.

Surrounded by his own things, Toby started to accept his rational brain's attempt to write it all off. A glance at the clock told him that if he ran as fast as he could he could make the appointment he had set with the therapist even. With that impetus, the young man catapulted out of his apartment…

…and came to a screeching halt as the world seemed to implode inside his head with more color and sound and smell and texture than he had ever known before. He brought his hands up to knot in his hair, trying to get a leash on it, and looked cautiously around to see if anyone was staring or how they were handling it.

His neighbor was walking the dog, oblivious to him, walking with a shimmer of dim gray energy around her. Across the street, some children were playing, all of them wrapped in bright and cheerful colors. As he concentrated on that, he noted the tallest one, perhaps the oldest, had tinges of gray creeping into his cocoon of color.

A vague recollection of a metaphysics and supernatural discussion came back to him. He'd been studying with all his might for a chemistry exam, but the study group had veered off like so often happened. 

_"Some people think our bio-energy and emotion emit colors, an aura."_

Was that what he was seeing? Then why were all the adults he saw so gray and dim? Why did the children radiate a rainbow of colors? And, most important, why was he seeing it at all?

"Sarah, what did you do to me?" he muttered as he pulled his hands out of his hair, forcing himself to stand straight, and look at his options.

Either someone had slipped him acid, or his rational mind needed to shut up and let him do what Sarah had asked, to believe in himself as a half-blooded faerie-born changeling.

He almost preferred the idea of the acid. That could be detoxed in time.


End file.
